The home of Paul Douglas on the web

Main Menu

TVBRO Week 4 15/10/12-21/10/12

This week, we were involved with another episode of CCi Live. But instead of producing the content, this week we were crewing the live show.

On Monday, we met up to discuss which roles we wanted to take during the live show. Since my career path is that of a presenter, I chose the role of Autocue Operator as this crew member must work closely with the presenters to ensure the autocue is functioning as the presenters wish. It also allowed me to gan more of an insight into how the autocue itself is operated from the other side, which I believe will be helpful knowledge when I am presenting myself.

Since most of us were trying out new roles, we decided to hold a pre-rehearsal on Wednesday to get more acquainted with our equipment and the tasks we needed to perform ahead of the Thursday rehearsal with the presenters and near-final content. This was extremely helpful, as it allowed me time to explore the autocue system and get used to how the dial performed and influenced the flow of the script.

As a result of this pre-rehearsal, we were relatively well primed for the main rehearsal on Thursday, which meant we were able to use that rehearsal troubleshooting the script and the inserts, identifying areas where we believed the producing group needed to make changes before the live show, just as they had done with our show the previous week.

With these changes to things like the flow of the show made, we were able to put together a fairly successful episode of the show on Friday. I enjoyed seeing the production from the other side, having spent most of my time in the studios rather than the gallery. It was also enlightening to see how the autocue responded to the operators input, as this has given me a much better understanding of what might be going on in the gallery when I am reading the autocue myself. Knowing this actually helps a lot, as it makes it far easier to predict what is likely to happen next and how long it will take if something goes wrong with the autocue while I am presenting.